This is an editorial piece written by Lilgreenman, longtime Half-Life obsessive and Valve community member. It summarizes and recapitulates the events of December 2011 – when it seemed like the whole Internet was aflame with rampant Half-Life speculation. Just in case you didn’t catch that little episode of community history, or maybe if you’re still wondering how the hell we fell for all that fake ARG gibberish.

Oh, and Happy Holidays!

To me, at least, it feels like it’s been much longer than a year since the anticipation for Valve’s Half-Life 3 really kicked off.

Late last month, A Call for Communication announced “A Red Letter Day”, a group event that would bring tens of thousands of Half-Life fans together in playing Half-Life 2, for half an hour on the 4th of February. That was yesterday, and it turns out… it did!

Despite what Valve plans or doesn’t plan to do regarding the next Half-Life, or how long they plan on developing it, there’s no denying that they’ve dropped the ball when it comes to communicating with the Half-Life community, and the gaming community at large. As a result, they may have inflicted a fatal injury upon the franchise and its community. There’s better ways to ensure a lengthy development time than acting like the franchise in question doesn’t exist, and occasionally annoying your fanbase by blatantly trolling them.

Whenever Half-Life 3 does come out, we’re all pretty sure it’s going to be monumental. I wouldn’t expect any less from a Half-Life game that’s been in development for nearly a decade. But I think we can all agree that Valve isn’t doing this right. At all. So what can we do? Can we even do anything at all? Well, there might be something. Let’s see what it is…